You Don’t Need CE Registry: ASHA Caught Misleading Its Membership Again

Scam alert: the CE registry

Is ASHA nothing but a scam? 66% of ASHA’s revenues go into the pockets of ASHA employees (that's how the one percenters who run ASHA afford their millionaire lifestyles in the DC Beltway). ASHA doesn’t have a product or service to sell so they created their worthless CCC’s and then spent an enormous amount of money marketing the falsehood that ASHA CCC’s somehow make clinicians better therapists. The CCC's do no such thing. I've heard plenty of first-hand accounts from clinicians who hardly ever saw their CFY supervisors during their CFY year. One slp told me that she never even spoke to her supervisor. Her supervisor signed off on the papers and mailed them back to her without any face-to-face meetings or a single phone conversation. The CCC’s aren’t a university degree. They aren’t a license. They’re nothing - but an ASHA scam to trick you into forking over your hard-earned money.

Let me make this perfectly clear (something ASHA will never do):

You don’t need the CE registry (if you don't believe me, call the ASHA action center at 800-498-2071 and ask them this direct question: "Will ASHA refuse to count my CE's toward certification renewal if I don't pay the CE registry fee?" While ASHA will mislead with a carefully worded letter, they wouldn't dare lie when asked that direct question: it would be lawsuit time again). 

The CE registry is a waste of money. ASHA has to recognize any CEU you earned for any ASHA approved course (that's the whole idea of it being ASHA approved). Save the certificate of attendance you get when taking the course or workshop. If you ever get audited, send in a photocopy of that. That’s all you need; I just saved you $35. The CE registry is redundant: why pay $35 to have someone else do what you can easily do yourself, i.e., save proof that you took the CE course or workshop?

Q. Why doesn't ASHA make this clearer?
A. For the same reason drug dealers don't help their customers get clean.

ASHA can’t have the membership knowing the truth because members would dump CE registry in a flash if they did. So what does ASHA do? They lie to  frighten mislead the membership into thinking that they won’t get their CE’s if they don’t hand over another $35 to ASHA. Just as audiologists were misled with a not-so-vaguely threatening form letter (ASHA was accused of fraud and had its ass dragged into court for it), ASHA members are now being misled with this CE registry scam. ASHA has a history of lying to being less than transparent with its own membership. Look here, here, and here.  ASHA is a sleazy organization that will throw its own ethics and members under the bus if there is money or power to be grabbed.

Take a look at the wording of the invoice that ASHA mailed out (dated 2/4/13) :

“We would like to award your ASHA CEUS for the course(s) you’ve taken, but we need your ASHA CE registry fee.”

What that very carefully worded statement implies (and what most people would easily assume reading it) is that if ASHA doesn’t get your CE registry fee, ASHA won’t award you your CEU’s. ASHA is no fool - it's an organization of professional communicators; they knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote that. And then there’s that opening kicker: ASHA “would like to award” you your ASHA CEU’s, as if your failure to write a $35 check is keeping nice, beneficent ASHA from doing so. 
Why are you standing in the way of cuddly ASHA doing what it would love to do, you stingy meanie?
It sounds like a solicitation from a psychic:  
Quick! Send ASHA a $35 check to keep its love flowing back to you! And while you’re at it, forward this to ten people on your mailing list or else the ASHA spell will be broken and you’ll be cursed!!!! 

The word for today is:

ex·tor·tion 

Noun. The practice of obtaining something, esp. money, through force or threats.

Say "no" to ASHA's bullying!

I guess with all the audiologists leaving ASHA, ASHA has to resort to veiled threats and bullying to keep its revenues up. 

Don’t fall for this scam.

Save your money and skip the CE registry. 

Better yet, don’t renew your ASHA membership. If an organization is willing to stoop to this despicable level to grab your money, why would you want to be a part of it?